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No bread is an island

...entire of itself. (With apologies to John Donne!)

I live and breathe breadmaking. I’m an evangelist who would like everyone to make his or her own bread. I want to demystify breadmaking and show it as the easy everyday craft that it is. To this end I endeavour to make my recipes as simple and as foolproof as I possibly can.

I call my blog 'No bread is an island' because every bread is connected to another bread. So a spicy fruit bun with a cross on top is a hot cross bun. This fruit dough will also make a fruit loaf - or Chelsea buns or a Swedish tea ring...

I'm also a vegan, so I have lots of vegan recipes on here - and I'm adding more all the time.

About Me

Torn away from the bosom of my family at the tender age of 18 - and never lived in my home town of Blackburn again. The RAF took me to HK; After a hitch of four years I emigrated to Australia and joined the RAAF, which took me to HK where I met my wife of 43 years. I then joined GCHQ which took me (us, with 2 children now) back to HK. Retired at 55, trained as a teacher of adults, gained a 2:1 in Teaching and Training at Plymouth Uni (which I thought went well with the 2 'O' levels with which I left school). And I've been teaching breadmaking ever since. Now running 6 or 7 classes a week, plus the odd Saturday workshop. My passion is breadmaking - or perhaps I should say the teaching of breadmaking; I'm also very interested in early development; And I like to cook - but I consider myself to be pretty average. I have a wife, two children, a daughter-in-law and a son-in-law and three grandchildren, (who can all make bread) who come and stay with us in the holidays and half-terms. Away from my family, I'm happiest teaching a Family Learning group, with parents and children, none of whom have made bread before. I get a real buzz out of turning people onto breadmaking.

Pinterest

Thursday, 2 November 2017

VEGAN INFO - AS IT COMES MY WAY

Almost every other day, new health research becomes available, more animal cruelty is exposed,or there's more evidence of the spread of veganism. So when I come across it, I'll post it here.There's also global warming/climate change - the biggest challenge to our survival. Here are some facts about the effects of livestock raising from the film Cowspiracy.The evidence is overwhelming - a vegan diet is better for our health, for animal welfare, and, most importantly for the planet. If you call yourself an environmentalist, going vegan is the most effective action you can take.I have several friends who either have cancer or have family members with the disease, so I've gathered together some of the research on what can be done to fight this.A whole food, plant-based diet and cancer.

Saturday 4th November 2017"Fed up with being fat and sick." How a whole food vegan diet is halting and reversing many of the modern diseases that afflict our society. (Item from Plant Based News)

Thursday 2nd November "Going vegan - a choice I've never regretted."A reporter's experience.Latest edition of Plant Based News - including stories on'50% of 16-24yr-olds in the UK are considering giving up meat according to a new study.''Marks and Spencer vegan Christmas sandwich.'And more.Wednesday 1st November

'What the Health’ is still on YouTube. It's apparently what convinced Lewis Hamilton to go vegan.

Wide ranging interview with Dr Milton Mills including his rebuttal of criticism of the film, ‘What the Health’ - and also the evidence that shows that we are herbivores, and notomnivores!

Saturday 7th October 2017Just found 'What the Health' on YouTube. Watch it while you can.And here's Mic the Vegan debunking the claims that "High cholesterol doesn't cause Heart Disease". Friday 6th October 2017Here's a blogpost by Dr Greger on 'Choosing to have a normal blood pressure'. As with many of these videos, the comments are well worth perusing.An interview with Dr Joel Kahn. 'Prescribe plants'. Anything by this guy is well worth watching.Latest edition of Plant Based News.Friday 29th September 2017I'm now officially an octogenarian, having turned 80 yesterday! Woohoo!Here's a brilliant interview with James Aspey, animal advocate extraordinaire. Listen to James, then tell me why you still feel you need to eat animal products!Latest Plant Based News - including news of dodgy chicken (isn't all chicken dodgy?), more vegan options at Zizzi's - and a forecast by Richard Branson that "we will stop killing animals for food within 30 years."Another cardiologist goes vegan.

Thursday 7th September 2017Richard Dawkins wrestles with his conscience:“It implies that all of us who are eating meat, including me, are in a very difficult moral position. What I am doing is going along with the fact that I live in a society where meat eating is accepted as the norm and it requires a level of… social courage, which I haven’t yet produced, to break out of that. It’s a little bit like the position which anybody, not everybody but many people, would have been in a couple of hundreds of years ago over slavery, where lots of people felt kind of morally uneasy about slavery but went along with it, because... the whole economy of the south depended upon slavery. Of course none of us like the idea of slavery but ‘you can’t seriously consider doing away with it because the whole economy would collapse’... I find myself in something like that situation. I think what I’d really like to see would be a mass consciousness raising movement so that we all become vegetarian and then it would be so much easier for those of us who find it difficult to go along with it. And quite apart from that you’d then have brilliant chefs making wonderful recipes.”(Feb 2014)"Vegan lifestyle is morally superior"May 2015.

Demand for alternative proteins – beyond traditional meat, fish and dairy sources – is expanding across Europe as consumers turn to products they view as healthier and more environmentally friendly and food makers work to drive excitement through innovation.

Sunday 27th August 2017Prostate cancer.Dr Greger, author of 'How not to die', has recently release 2 videos on the subject of prostate cancer:The first, 'Treating advanced prostate cancer with diet: Part 1' has a link to part 2.I recommend signing up to his website for regular updates on a whole variety of health-based subjects. He has a new video out 4-5 times a week - generally these are around 5 minutes long.Sunday 27th August 2017I've just come across 'What the Health' on another website. I should watch this as soon as you can, since it may well be pulled at any moment.And I've just realised that 'Cowspiracy' and 'Food Matters' can also be watched on the same website.Plant based news. More exciting news from the WFPB world.Arthritis:I have quite a few friends with various types of arthritis - with varying degrees of pain. Most of them think that it's just something they have to put up with - take the tablets, have the knee-replacement ops, etc. And generally, they don't think to research the subject. It's another one of those iniquitous examples of 'conventional wisdoms' that we should be fighting, in all areas of our lives. I have a personal interest in this, given that I cured myself of osteoarthritis 14 years ago, when I became a vegan. So, on their behalf, I've done quite a bit of research into the subject. But I didn't have to try very hard. A simple online search for 'Arthritis vegan diet' brings many positive results. One of these is an article by Dr John McDougall, a well-respected physician who advocates a whole food plant based diet. But the search also brings up several first-person testimonies on the same page. Here's Dr Greger on the causes and treatment of rheumatoid arthritis.

Here's a story about quarterbacks in the NFL - seems quite a few of them are going vegan!

Monday 21st August 2017

Latest edition of Plant Based News. This is a fast moving site, with new info posted frequently. If you think you've missed something, click on 'view all news' at the top of the page.

Wednesday 16th August 2017This evening I found 'What the Health' - the follow-up film to Cowspiracy - on YouTube (now withdrawn, unfortunately)*. While I was watching this, my sis-in-law rang to tell me - how good I was, how much her respect for me had grown, and how I'd been right all along. When I managed to get her to slow down and tell me why she was saying this, it turned out that her and her husband had watched 'What the Health' on Netflix last night, and were bowled over by it. Her husband has had diabetes for several years and had let me know, in no uncertain terms, that there was no way he was going to give up meat, 'No way!' Now here I was hearing that they intended to watch the film again, with a view to making changes in their diet. In the meantime, they say their respect for me has grown tremendously. I must admit, I'm basking in their praise. It feels good after having my views dismissed for all these years!The film can be purchased here. (*See link posted on 27th August to watch online.)Latest edition of Plant Based News.Here's a ten-minute clip from the Victoria Derbyshire show on BBC News, with a panel discussing The Rise of Veganism. Pity about the nutritionist, who seems to be in a state of denial.And here's a doctor explaining why he went vegan.More evidence on the beneficial effects of a WFPB diet:"Plant-based (vegetarian and vegan) diets are an effective strategy for improving nutrient intake. At the same time, they are associated with decreased all-cause mortality and decreased risk of obesity, the 2 diabetes, and coronary heart disease."(From The Science of Vegetarian Nutrition and Health, 9 August 2017)Stop feeding your cancer. Here's an Irish GP getting good results from putting his cancer patients on a plant based diet.Monday 7th August 2017Is a whole food plant based diet the answer? Doctors, including cardiologist Kim Williams, discuss the benefits of a vegan diet.Sunday 6th August 2017"Identical twins demonstrate diet trumps genes", Dr Rosane Oliveira.James Cameron to release a vegan documentary, The Game Changers. (VegNews)Our Gut Bacteria say "Go vegan or else". (Mic the Vegan)(Click on 'Show more' underneath the video for all Mic's references)Saturday 5th August 2017(Previous posting on why a whole food plant based (WFPB) diet is the optimum diet.)Here's a website that's updated pretty much every day, with news of all aspects of a WFPB diet - health, animal welfare and the environment.A couple of items that stand out from the latest edition:- Vegans in the US can now get cheaper life insurance thanks to their diet.- Dairy milk under greater threat from plant-based milks.- Interview with Dr Michael Greger, author of 'How not to die', which is still on the NY Times best-seller list, 20 months after publication. Another site, investigating Prostrate cancer and a WFPB.'Mic the vegan' is a young scientist who posts short, informative, well-researched, info about veganism on his YouTube channel. Here he is on how your body transforms on a vegan diet.Canada's new draft food guidelines promote plant nutrition and no longer include dairy.Plant based diet eases osteoarthritis.